Creative Living...

(In case you're a regular reader (hi dad)...and have wondered where I've gotten to this week...here it is!)

Each year I am blessed to spend a long weekend with an amazing group of ladies at the Devorah Jewish Quilting Kallah* at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute.

We spend a whole weekend celebrating our creativity and our ability to be artists, in whatever capacity that is for each of us. Everyone brings their sewing machines, piles of fabric, thread, needles, beads, ribbons, rotary cutters, lamps...you name it. I definitely pack more for the quilting studio than I do to wear!

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I was thinking of how to fully explain the event here on my blog. Why quilting? Why Jewish quilting? Most people expressed it this way: we have quilting friends, we have Jewish friends, but there aren't so many avenues to put them both together. This is an awesome opportunity for women to gather from all over and share both their faith and their art. And that is marvelous. The atmosphere is thick with creative juices and we manage to eat some pretty good ice cream too! We study, we sew, we sew, we pray, we talk and laugh and cry (and unfortunately, sew our fingers into the machines occasionally and end up at the ER!) and eat (and eat and eat), we walk and we talk and we sing and sometimes even dance. It's quite a remarkable group and a remarkable weekend.

So...here are some of my best shots from this weekend...

from our creativity exercise...collages...


piecing it all together...


my workspace...


our "studio"

For more best shots, go here...
What did you do this weekend?

*Kallah means gathering. Devorah, the character in the Bible also known as Deborah, means "bee", which is a very nice pun on the Quilting Bee....